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Because that decision would rest solely on how he felt about me and not due to feeling like he owed me anything.
But then his phone rang, and the moment dissolved into a familiar awkward tension I couldn’t shake.
Chapter Thirteen
Pete
“Sierra?” I called out in my obviously empty apartment. I set the box holding the brand new smart phone I’d just bought for her down on the table in the front hallway and walked into the living room, twirling my keys over my finger.
I flexed my jaw as I noticed her usual spot on the couch empty, a nest of blankets stuffed to one side and remote to the TV sitting on the coffee table.
Where the hell was she now?
Not in her room, of course.
A week had passed since she’d come into my life like a freight train off the tracks. A little under a week since her first appointment where I’d let a grown man stick his fingers in my mouth just to prove this child was mine.
A week of her fluttering around my house like an angel, her smile brightening every single room.
I was going insane.
I’d set her up with a job at the bookstore twice a week for a few hours a day but she hadn’t started yet. I honestly didn’t like the idea of her working. She was pretty sick every day, especially in the morning when she first woke up. I’d lie in bed listening to her retching in the bathroom and I’d never felt so hopeless.
I spent a good deal of my time in my office but did tend the bar at night from time to time, so I liked to sleep in.
Sierra, on the other hand, was up with the sun and making herself at home as the days passed and began to blur together.
She liked fresh flowers. I noticed that one day when she walked down to the weekend market. She came back with fresh produce and a huge bouquet of late summer flowers that she placed in a beer growler because I didn’t have a vase.
She bought more when they began to wilt and hung the old flowers upside down in front of a sunny window to dry out so she could save them forever.
So, the next time the flowers began to wilt, I came home with more, and a real vase.
She hadn’t said anything if she noticed, but I hadn’t expected her to.
I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, to be completely honest.
Normally I’d just be heading down to work at this time of the day. It was early afternoon, and she’d been asleep on the couch when I left to pick up the phone.
It was tied to my account—a family plan. Something I thought I’d never need.
My parents were likely rolling over in the graves now.
“Sierra?” I shouted, but there was no answer, and her shoes were gone from their usual place at the front door. Sighing, I left the apartment and walked downstairs to the bar. I stopped to talk to the delivery guy for a moment and signed off on the grocery delivery that would see the bar through the weekend.
When I walked inside, I found Sierra sitting at the bar with a basket of hot fries and a drink.
I rolled my eyes and saddled up next to her.
“That better be Sprite,” I said, groaning as I sat down.
Frankie snorted and rolled her eyes between me and Sierra as she dried off glasses and set them back in the rack.
“It is. Do you want to try some to prove it?” Sierra teased.
“I believe you.”
“That’d be a first,” she breathed, shooting me a look that I shot right back.
